Inward Blog

Viewing entries tagged with 'brand engagement'

As most of my readers and followers know, Inward and I have been huge supporters of employee engagement for over 20 years. One piece of research after another supports the proposition that employee engagement is a decisive factor in company success. Research from EEA (Enterprise Engagement Association) has data that says companies with high levels of employee engagement have higher shareholder value and revenue. Gallup research indicates that high employee engagement contributes to higher productivity and revenue growth. I just saw some recent study that suggests that less than 50% of the employees understand the brand idea and even fewer understand what they're supposed to do to support the brand value proposition. So, it comes as no surprise what the Temkin Group has just released regarding their “Employee Engagement Competency & Maturity, 2018”.

For those of you who are regular readers of our blogs, you know that we generally don’t cut and paste articles or press releases from other sources. However, today I came across an interesting piece from Paychex that ran on PRNewswire that is worthy of attention. Instead of paraphrasing it, I thought I’d just run it in its entirety with a link to the actual source of the report. The announcement is about a recently released Paychex Pulse HR survey that was recently conducted among HR professionals at one of their annual conferences. In a nutshell, they say that there is a strong commitment to talent management, as 85% of respondents said they're focusing on company culture to drive results.

Creating a large pool of loyal customers is extremely important to the sustainability of a business, but it is the employees that are the enabler of the products and innovations. Having loyal employees and loyal customers allow companies to sell products more successfully than average. Great products and excellent employee service are crucial to creating loyal customers and growing a business.

We are humbled and proud to announce that the Enterprise Engagement Alliance has bestowed the 'First' award to Inward Strategic Consulting as one of three top Solution Provider honorees last week at their EEA expo and Gala dinner in Orlando. The 'First' Award winners were selected by EEA Engagement Strategies Media (ESM) editorial contributors based on their actual first-hand knowledge of these companies, confirming without question that each of the honorees was indeed a pioneer at seeking to profit from the concept of linking engagement across the entire organization in a strategic way to achieve key goals.

I just returned from an Advanced Learning Institute (ALI) conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Strategic Internal Branding. As usual, ALI did an outstanding job of lining up some great speakers and presentations and participants were able to attend four hands-on workshops on the first day. Inward kicked the meeting off with a workshop on implementing an effective internal branding process that drives employee engagement and exceptional performance. So after this two hour presentation, I was able to spend quality time listening to other workshops and presentations and learning from others.

Every organization has a culture, whether it’s clearly articulated or not. So what exactly is “culture”? Merriam Webster simply defines it as a “way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization.” Defining the culture always comes down to articulating the values and beliefs of the leadership. For example, if family values are a core belief of leadership, the culture will be one that supports a strong work/life balance focus. Or if innovation is important to the leadership, the culture will be one of continuous improvement and leadership in the market. Apple is an obvious example of an innovation culture. So if vision represents what an organization is trying to achieve, culture defines how people are going to behave and what values they are going to embrace while they strive to achieve that vision.

It is both logical and common knowledge that there is a direct correlation between high customer experiences with high levels of employee customer experiences. When aligned properly, it provides incremental revenue and customer satisfaction. There have been numerous studies cited by the NRF and Gallup, which substantiates this finding. Yet, all too often I see external customer experience programs falter and fail. They start out with a lot of enthusiasm and support and after about six months, new initiatives and priorities come into play and the customer experience program wanes while the focus shifts somewhere else. Ultimately management loses interest or doesn’t see the benefit/value. The programs get canceled and get the bad rap of being ineffective. I often hear clients say, “we’ve tried that before and it failed.”

As a leader, it can be difficult to understand what your employees really want from their jobs. Trying to deliver “happiness” is too vague and intangible, especially when each person’s definition of happiness is different. Marketing Metrix published some interesting research on employee satisfaction in the hospitality industry. The results are quite staggering.

Creating a large pool of loyal customers is extremely important to the sustainability of a business. Having loyal customers allows you to up-sell your products at a more successful rate. Great products and excellent customer service are key to creating loyal customers. No matter what industry you are in, issues always arise; it is how you deal with these issues that can really make or break your relationship with your customers. Customers want to find that one brand they can really trust. Once that trust is built, they’ll continue to come back for more! Check out these 5 tips on building customer loyalty for your business: